Giraffe Leung Lok-hei has visited up to 30 banks in the past two years, most of the time carrying a single HK$100 (US$13) note with him.
The 26-year-old remembers queuing for up to nine hours to exchange the money for a mass of 20-cent coins, a rare request that often perplexes members of staff.
“They would ask: ‘Are you a vendor? What do you use the coins for?’”
“And I would answer: ‘For art’,” Leung says, laughing.
“Then comes the lonely and tiresome journey dragging a suitcase full of copper home.”
His somewhat bizarre artwork features coins, white sandalwood leaves and handwritten traditional Chinese characters, all of which were once prevalent in Hongkongers’ daily lives but now “rendered obsolete by social development”, according to Leung.
For the coin paintings, the millennial artist uses chemicals that cause rusting, and the creative process usually takes months of working – and waiting.
Leung has completed 12 such works since 2017, each crafted using tens of thousands of coins, depicting iconic Hong Kong scenes with a nostalgic touch, such as the HSBC lion statues in Central and horse racing, the sport of colonial origins that still grips the city.
“Even for someone as young as me, it’s evident that Hong Kong is changing more and more rapidly. I wish to remind people of the value of things that existed and played a role in our lives,” Leung says of the messages behind his creations.
For Leung, keeping these memories is a way of taking back control in an efficiency-oriented society that “pushes people to move on without asking their will”, where there is little room to slow down and learn from the past.
He chooses the 20-cent coin as the medium because of its unique shape, whereas the leaves represent the city’s diminishing green areas, and handwritten characters symbolise the challenges the form faces in the digital era.
Describing himself as a “very local” artist focusing on social issues, Leung says his favourite work involving the coins is the one portraying the Queen’s Pier, a colonial heritage site once located in Central and demolished between 2007 and 2008 in spite of protests.
“I was 14 at the time, and I watched the pier being destroyed. But I couldn’t understand why people went on hunger strike and refused to leave. It seemed like overreacting to me,” Leung recalls. “Only when looking back did I realise that it was my first memory of civil disobedience.”
Another artwork he mentions is one that compares the skyline of Central with Sham Shui Po’s, the poorest region in Hong Kong.
To amplify the contrast, Leung created the image of Central with dollar coins instead of the lower monetary value of the 20-cent pieces.
“The implications may be subtle, but quite relatable for Hongkongers. Some netizens commented that my works tell stories,” Leung says, adding the internet was the place where his name somehow came into fame.
When Leung quit his interior designer job and started making art two years before, the college graduate had no connections to the art community, so he decided to post his works on LIHKG, a forum website popular among the city’s youth.
With the first post attracting over 1,000 replies, Leung has managed to sell five coin paintings to online buyers so far, while planning his first exhibition in the coming months.
“I watched him rising from nobody to having these opportunities, it’s hard not to admire his perseverance,” says Ken Cheng, 25, Leung’s college friend.
“I knew he had great ideas, but I didn’t think he could make it – not many artists can after all.”
Leung, who has also been taking freelancing design jobs and teaching at workshops, is to enroll in a master’s degree programme in creative art later this year.
“It’s a requirement from my parents, who still have doubts about what I do,” Leung says. “Sometimes in order to do what you really want, there has to be compromise.”
